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“The majority of embryos die within a few weeks of concep-
tion. This fact is widely known within medical circles, but
is a surprise to many in the general public. Embryo death
due to natural causes is known as spontaneous abortion
and occurs very frequently.

Two of the most respected studies of the incidence of spontaneous abortion are by Hertig (1967)
and by French and Bierman (1962). The information from these was combined by Leridon (1977) in the form of an
intrauterine life table (represented in Figure 1).

As Figure 1 shows, the riskiest time is before the embryo
has implanted in the uterine wall (which typically occurs be-
tween 8–10 days after conception (Wilcox et al. 1999). During
this early stage, the proportion of surviving embryos drops
off rapidly and only approximately 50% of them successfully
implant. For those embryos that do implant successfully, the
risk of death becomes much less significant and most will
survive through to term.

These numbers show that spontaneous abortion is an
everyday phenomenon. A mother of three children could be
expected to have also had approximately five spontaneous
abortions. An embryo’s survival to term is the exception
rather than the norm.

It might seem surprising that these dramatic death rates
for early embryos could remain unknown to the general
public. However, the reason for this is that most embryo
loss occurs before the pregnancy has been detected, and the
woman is unaware that anything out of the ordinary has
happened. The embryo simply passes out of the uterus with
the next menses.”

Pardon the weird formatting, copying from a PDF is haphazard at best. Probably won’t change your mind, but I think the argument is fairly well thought through.